Don't Fall
by Erimthar
Summary: Based on BtVS: Season Eight, the comic book continuation of the TV series. Xander has witnessed the murder of his new love, the young Slayer Renee. But not all endings have to be sad ones...


(This story takes place sometime after the events of the _Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8_ comic, issue #15. It will not make sense to those not familiar with the comic.)

******

………

_I'm not ready… I hope he knows… I never got to tell him… Xander I'm not ready….._

_I'm so scared._

******

Buffy leaned on the stone parapet staring out into the Scottish fog, and thinking a lot about how much the world sucked, and how saving such a world, over and over again, was maybe no way to spend a life.

This castle was so damned gloomy. Castle Frankenfurter, some of the girls had taken to calling it, trying to make the best of things. Slayers always tried to make the best of things.

"Let's do the effing time warp again," Buffy muttered to herself.

"You say, something, ma'am?" It was Leah, she of the incredibly red hair, standing sentry nearby. Born fifty miles from this very spot. This kind of place probably didn't bother her at all. Did that hair run in the family, Buffy wondered? The women of her clan could have served as signal torches on castle walls like this, on nights like this.

Buffy really liked Leah, and so she bit back the tart reply she would have given anyone else. "Nothing. Just… thinking about things. Renee. Xander."

Leah nodded. Got a look on her face like the one Buffy imagined she must have herself. Leah was too pretty for facial expressions like that. The younger Slayer walked over a little closer and joined Buffy in gazing out into the nothing.

******

_It sure is bright. Nice and warm, too. I like it like this._

_How long have I been here?_

_Why can't I see myself? Why can't I see anything except the brightness?_

_It's nice._

******

Xander had been bearing up pretty well since Tokyo. So Buffy was worried about him. Willow was too, she knew. Watching the love of your life get run through with a giant spear… the handle of that damned Scythe… was not something that was likely to go away. Ever.

Xander was strong. But nobody was that strong.

Buffy reached into her pocket and felt the small card there, with Renee's earring pinned to it. It was a dangly earring with a silver lozenge at the end, on which was imprinted a little silver bird, wings outstretched… a dove, maybe? Dracula, just before he had left for home, had pressed it into her hand.

"I rescued this from my manserv… from my friend's lover just before she was consigned to the flames. Keep it safe for him. Alone of all the people in this miserable world, I do not wish to see him suffer." Buffy had nodded, and found herself shrinking back a bit at the look in his eyes. She had met Dracula once before, years earlier, but not until that awful night in Tokyo had she truly understood what the legends were all about… why his name had once been the most feared in the entire world.

And now she saw it again.

Buffy wondered when it would be a good time to give Xander a keepsake of Renee.

Dracula had then said something very strange, before he'd turned to go. "Tell the ginger-haired Jewess to call her _Aunt Flame_. Your weapon wants inspecting."

An odd thing to say. It had taken Buffy a few moments to figure out that "ginger-haired Jewess" was a title most likely to belong to Willow.

When she mentioned Dracula's message to Willow, she had just shrugged, as perplexed as Buffy had been. "Aunt Flame? I have an Aunt Rhoda and an Aunt Andrea. And another aunt who drank herself to death during the Nixon administration. Other than that, I'm auntless."

But Willow had seemed lost in thought for a day after that. And the following evening, when they had been eating dinner at what the girls called "the Gryffindor table" in the main hall, Willow had suddenly gasped and leapt up and ran out of the room.

Buffy looked after her, mystified, and looked down at her plate. It was haggis, sure, but it wasn't any worse than last night's haggis, or the haggis of the night before that.

******

_Now there was something besides the brightness. It was a woman, green. Or a snake, green. One or the other. But green._

_It looked at her with snake and woman eyes._

"_At least you were easy to findddddd," it said, the voice reverberating like it had passed through a thousand echo chambers to reach her. "Your love burns brightttttttt."_

_Those eyes were impossible to look away from._

"_The gift I give you is an expensive onnnnnnne. Your friends must love you very muchhhhh. You must thank themmmmmm."_

_And then it was on top of her, and then it was through her, and then it was gone._

_Oh, hey… she could feel her fingers now. She could feel her toes! Could even wiggle them. Could move her head to look at the empty brightness in every direction. Still couldn't see any fingers or toes, though, or anything else but that pretty silver string spiralling off into the distance away from her. That hadn't been there before, had it?_

_And a name now! Renee! That was her. And…. Xander._

_That was him._

******

Buffy had never seen anyone literally put through a wringer. She wasn't even sure what a wringer was. But whatever it was, Willow looked like she had been through one.

With her was the oldest woman Buffy had ever seen. In one knobby hand, the woman clutched a broomstick.

_A broomstick?_ It dawned on Buffy. _An actual broomstick? You have got to be kidding._

"Buffy?" Willow sounded like she had just smoked three cartons of cigarettes, all at once, and washed it down with a nice glass of bug spray. "This is Tanta Bren. She's here to look at the Scythe."

"I owe her grandpapa a favor," said the old woman in a Yiddish accent that would have cracked up Mel Brooks. "Otherwise I don't come out here, all this way and in the middle of the night yet."

"You owe Willow's grandfather a favor?" Buffy looked at Willow, who just shrugged wearily. "Which one? Maury or Doc?"

"The one who was cantor for Rabbi Loew back in Prague," said Tanta Bren. Buffy gazed at her blankly. The old woman waved her hand irritably. "1570, 1571. What am I, an almanac?"

"Tanta Bren was a Watcher once," said Willow. "She was one of the last people to see the Scythe before it disappeared."

"My Tzeitel… now there was a Slayer. She died well." Tanta Bren reached out a wizened hand. "Let me see the weapon."

Buffy handed it to her. Tanta Bren examined it from end to end, turned it over in her hands. She sniffed at it. She even licked it, the grossness of which caused Buffy to make a face.

"She is a good weapon," she said. "Hundreds of lives she's taken and billions saved since the last time I saw her, she says."

The old woman hefted the Scythe, considering it for a long while.

"Occupied," she said, looking at Buffy.

"What the now?"

"It's occupied. Someone tried to use her to take the life of a Slayer. That don't work, you see. This blade is only death to a Slayer's enemies, but only life to a Slayer. It's made of the same power that makes you girls what you are. Hmmph. Far cry from my day, with all these Slayers running around without waiting for the last one to die first. And most of them showing too much skin."

******

_Renee thought that the brightness was getting old now._

"_I don't think I want to be here anymore," she said to nothing. "I'm scared and it's too bright and it's too warm here."_

_She felt invisible tears streaming down her invisible face._

"_I want to go home."_

******

Buffy and Willow didn't breathe, for quite a long time, as Tanta Bren regarded the Scythe in silence. "You got an Alexander here?"

Buffy thought for a moment. _Alexander? Oh, Xander!_ "Yes," she said. "How did you…"

"You'd best get him. Now."

"Leah, go get…" But by the time Buffy turned around, Leah was already out the door, calling for Xander.

******

Xander didn't seem too comfortable to be in the same room as the Scythe. Since Tokyo Buffy had made sure never to go near him while carrying it.

Tanta Bren fixed him with her eagle gaze. "You loved a girl just then," she told him.

Xander edged uneasily toward Buffy. "Buff, is this some kind of grief counsellor?" he whispered to her. "Because I…"

"_Loved her a great deal_," Tanta Bren bellowed at him, shutting him up. "I should ever love anybody so much, except for my Dov, who died in the time of the _nadler_."

Xander looked at her blankly. Buffy thought Tanta Bren must be used to being looked at blankly.

"Come over here, boy," said Tanta Bren, more kindly now. She held the handle of the Scythe up to him. "Take hold of it."

Xander looked at Buffy as if he'd just been asked to grab hold of a clot of someone else's boogers, crawling with maggots. But he grabbed hold of the handle. Was Renee's blood still on it? It felt warm. _God_. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard.

******

_Renee felt a tug._

_Was it that silver string? What was that thing, anyway?_

_Where was she, and what was she, and why was she?_

"_Xander?" she whimpered._

******

"Do you have the body?" Tanta Bren was calm now, her voice even.

Buffy realized she was the only one who was going to answer. "Body? I… no, we don't have any bodies here. Er, not this week anyway."

Tanta Bren clucked and shook her head. "That's bad," she said. "I don't know…"

Something about the Scythe seemed to catch her attention.

Buffy couldn't imagine what could make a look of astonishment appear in the eyes of a woman like this… but such a look did.

"_Oy g'vald!"_ she bellowed. "There's a cord! A cord! How could you get so lucky?" Then she glanced at Willow with a shrewd look.

She turned to Buffy. "You got something that belonged to her? _Anything?"_

Buffy was helpless. "Belonged to _who_?"

"_Renee!"_ shouted the old witch. "How long you want she should wait for you?"

Buffy thought Xander was going to grow his missing eye back so that it could join its surviving twin in popping out of his head. He looked at Tanta Bren, then back at Buffy, then back at Tanta Bren.

Buffy remembered the earring in her pocket. She fished it out. A numb look of recognition crossed Xander's face as she handed it over to the old woman.

Tanta Bren tore the earring off its card, and without hesitation plunged the pin into the palm of her hand, fastening it there. Then she grabbed the handle of the Scythe with that hand, and the other.

"You," she instructed Xander. "Grab on with both hands. Think about Renee and tell her how much you love her. And if you believe in anything, pray. And if you don't believe in anything, _pray like you did!"_

Four hands grasped the Scythe for dear life. Tanta Bren started chanting words that didn't sound like a human voice should be able to make them. After a few moments, it didn't even sound like a voice anymore. It sounded like angles and planes and equations and the spaces where things were not.

White fire burst from out of the old lady's eyes. And she wasn't an old lady anymore.

******

_The cord was definitely pulling her now. A million miles an hour, it felt like. Renee was glad there was nothing to watch going past. If there had been, she probably would have spit up from motion sickness. Did Andrew have any spare Dramamine, she wondered?_

_She looked down at the silver cord, down toward where her feet should have been._

_And there were feet there._

******

Buffy couldn't remember having the castle placed on a giant rotating platform, but she must have done so at some point. _Why did I think we needed a turntable castle?_ she thought dully. _We can't afford that, and it's making me barf._ She barfed.

The sun was in the sky. _It's eleven o'clock at night_, Buffy argued. Oops, it was nighttime again. _Told you._ Up was down. The rest of Buffy's dinner was up. _Oh, Willow is puking too. We're just like twin sisters._ Funny, Buffy didn't know they had hurricanes in Scotland, or that said hurricanes could talk. She would have asked Renee to explain herself, if she hadn't been dead, which didn't explain why she was standing there, and was naked.

"Renee," she said. "Cover yourself up. Xander is standing right there. Oops, too late." Buffy had the presence of mind to sit down before she fainted.

Willow didn't. "Somebody catch this girl," was the last thing Buffy could recall hearing. The last thing she saw was Tanta Bren looking down at Willow's crumpled form. "Oh well. She'll be okay. Those Rosenbergs, they're strong people. But they need to be careful of who they make deals with, said wise old Tanta Bren while looking in her direction…"

******

_What's rule number one, Renee? Don't fall. Gotta fight. Please don't let me fall. Thank you. Thank you for catching me. It would be bad to fall…_

_Xander? Is that you?_


End file.
